Why Democrats Shouldn’t Fret About High GOP Turnout

Donald Trump may be firing up some white voters—but not enough to outnumber the people he's alienating.

March 29, 2016

Whatever
else one might say
about the tragicomic 2016 Republican primaries, nobody can deny that they’ve attracted a lot
of attention. The debates havegarnered remarkably high ratings—perhaps because so many people enjoy
watching Donald Trump’s act, whether or not they’re considering voting
Republican. But Republican turnout in the primaries and
caucuses is also up a great deal, and has outpaced Democratic turnout considerably.So
far, almost five
million more votershave
shown up for Republican primaries and
caucuses than for Democratic contests.

To Donald
Trump, the lesson is clear: He’s capable of bringing large numbers of
new voters into the Republican Party. At
the March 3 debate in Detroit,
the mogul declared that
he was “very,
very proud” because “millions and millions of people have
come to the Republican Party over the last little while.” Trump,
who has shallow roots in the GOP and is viewed unfavorably by upwards of 70 percent
of the public (and “very unfavorably” by half),
is a very weak presidential candidate by most conventional measures. But should
Democrats worry that his ability to mobilize voters will overcome these
liabilities, particularly given that likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton
also is viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters?

“Democratic Party elites
shouldn’t be high-fiving each other,” The Huffington Post’s Zach Carter wrote
in late February. “They
should be very, very worried.” The social
science, however, says they shouldn’t fret. As both Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight and
Barry Burden and Jordan Hsu of The
Monkey Cage have
recently explained, there is no evidence that turnout in the primaries is
correlated with turnout in general elections. Turnout in primary elections is so low (compared to that of general
elections),
that it can increase substantially without indicating that the
party is attracting significant numbers of new followers. As Enten points out,
it’s not really surprising that the free-for-all Republican primaries have
attracted a higher number of voters than the Democratic race, which despite
Bernie Sanders’s unexpectedly strong challenge has always had a clear,
well-known frontrunner in Hillary Clinton.

Based on
past patterns, then, Democrats have nothing to worry about. But, of course, if
past patterns were an ironclad guarantee, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the
most likely Republican nominee in the first place. The best social-science
analysis indicated that Trump’s lack of support among
party elites would doom his chances at the presidency. If the 2016 campaign has taught
observers any lessons, it’s not to be wary of history repeating itself,
it’s notto expect history to repeat itself.

Trump’s
ascendance should remind us of two things about the political science of
elections. First, we’re dealing with a small “n” (i.e, a small sample),
becausethe
modern primary system is a relatively
recent phenomenon. The small number of competitive
primaries means that what appears to be a strong pattern tends to be less
robust than it first appears. And, second, the political universe is dynamic
rather than static. Historically, for example, Congress has been roughly as productive in times of divided government as it
has in times of unified government. But
it would be unwise to bet on this trend continuing, since more disciplined and
polarized parties, combined with a steep decline of norms that historically have compelled
congressional leaders to make deals with presidents from the other party, mean
that divided government is very likely to be less productive than unified
government going forward.

With those
caveats, I think it’s likely that this is one case where the findings of social
science will hold. Donald Trump will almost certainly be a very weak general-election candidate.Because
hischief appeal is to voters
who are already Republican-leaning, there’s little or no chance he can attractsignificant numbers of new voters to the Republican coalition. And those voters he does attract are likely to be outnumbered by the
counter-mobilization against him.In
fact, the anxious Democrats have it backward: It’s likely that Trump’s presence on the ballot will increase
Democratic turnout, not Republican turnout, in November.

The argument
that Donald Trump can transform the
Republican coalition runs something like this. With its relentless
focus on upper-class tax cuts and reductions in middle-class entitlements—which even conservative voters mostly don’t want—the GOP
has shackleditself at
the national level to a declining base of voters. Trump, by saying he would
leave Social Security alone and expressing skepticism about trade deals, has a
populist message that could bring white working-class voters into the
Republican fold. (Trump also supports a massive upper-class tax cut,
although he hasn’t emphasized it.) Combine the populism with his unique ability to get across to people who don’t typically pay
attention to politics, and Trump might be
able to produce a Republican majority.

The most
obvious flaw in this argument is that there just aren’t that many “Reagan
Democrats” who still vote for Democrats—people who Trump can sway to
the GOP. White voters with “some college” or less
already overwhelmingly vote Republican. And
Trump’ssky-high unfavorable ratings put him at a
disadvantage in terms of attracting educated
professionals who aren’t alreadyvoting for the GOP. The most promising terrain for new white voters—and for flipping states won by President Obama—is in the Rust Belt. But to carry the Rust Belt states (with the exception of Ohio), Trump would have to win a much, much larger number of white voters than Mitt Romney did
in 2012. Sincethe
white voters whose message Trump is most likely to appeal to are already voting Republican,
this seems massively unlikely.

Perhaps
Trump could succeed not so much by attracting new Republican voters as getting
more Republican-leaning voters to the polls? This
won’t be easy, either, as Republicans
reliably turned out for Romney in 2012. It’s true, as purveyors of the “missing Republican voters” theory say, that the Republican coalition hasn’t been growing in recent years—so theoretically, at least, there’s room to add new voters. But any increase in
white turnout is likely to be counterbalanced by the way Trump will mobilize
minority voters, and particularly Hispanics, to the polls for
Democrats. We can’t know for certain until the election happens,
but it seems likely that Trump would will compel
more Hispanic voters to turn out in opposition than Romney did. That will increase the number of new white voters
Trump would need to attract.

This aspect
of a Trump nomination is particularly important, because it has effects that
will extend beyond 2016. It’s worth remembering that George W. Bush lost Hispanic voters by only 18 points in 2004. Two
cycles later, Romney and his “self-deportation”
messagelost them by 44. A Trump nomination would only
accelerate this trend—and once people start identifying as party supporters, they become unlikely to change back.

If Trump gets the nomination, “anti-immigrant and particularly anti-Mexican-immigrant rhetoric is very likely to mobilize opposition on the part of the Latino community in November,” said Hannah Walker, a doctoralfellowat the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race at the University of Washington. Scholars have documented several examples of similar counter-mobilizations in the Latino community. Most notably, mid-’90s California initiatives directed at immigrants and bilingual education and Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” comments in 2012 seem to have mobilized Latino voters to turn out, and the passage of the anti-immigration “Sensenbrenner bill” in 2006 led to huge opposition rallies. It seems very likely that a Trump nomination would similarly motivate Latino voters to come to the polls in opposition.

There’s an
additional problem for Trump and the Republicans: gender. Hillary
Clinton has some serious liabilities as a candidate—the aforementioned poor
favorability ratings, for starters, as well as being an
ultra-establishment candidate in a year in which voters appear to be in an
anti-establishment mood. But as the New
Republic’s Elspeth Reeve has observed, one of Clinton’s strengths as a
candidate is her ability to give blustering sexists enough rope to hang
themselves. She did this to considerable effect in her 2000 Senate campaign
against Rick Lazio, and Trump’s misogynist condescension
dwarfs Lazio’s. It seems likely that some number of affluent,
Republican-leaning women might be inclined to vote for Clinton after seeing
more of Trump’s act.

None of this
is to say that Democrats should be overconfident as they
look toward November. Trump would have to be a not merely bad, but
positively catastrophic, candidate for the Democrats to have a significant
chance of retaking
the
U.S. House; even winning the handful of seats needed
toregaining the
Senate majority (particularly crucial given the vacant Supreme Court seat)
won’t be easy. Under the current partisan alignment, any major-party candidate
can potentially win the presidency under the right conditions (although not only Trump, but Ted
Cruz, is unattractive enough to test the limits of this). But the Democratic
Party currently holds a structural advantage in the Electoral College, and
nominating Trump would probably make it even harder for the Republicans to assemble
a majority of voters.

Trump primarily
appeals to a shrinking, already-Republican slice of the electorate—and he alienates the pool of voters that’s growing. Barring an economic or military crisis, it’s hard to see his path to the White
House. There isn’t an
obvious opportunity for him to bring a lot of new voters into the Republican
fold, and he is likely to both increase the turnout of Hispanic voters and make
them even more predominantly Democratic. For both 2016 and beyond, that doesn’t
look like a winning Republican formula—no matter how many folks
are turning out for the GOP primaries.